Recently, I spent a night in the emergency room and two in the psych ward mental health floor of my local hospital. If you’re a regular reader, please don’t worry! It was voluntary, I was not physically hurt, and I am glad I did it.

But it did happen. If I am asked outright, I don’t want to deny it. So I’ll be interrupting other types of posting and making a goal to describe my experience in four parts. A good friend of mine told me to not pretend it didn’t happen, not try to chunk the Catalina that found herself in the hospital – the way I wanted to chunk myself out of life.

Eh, not as of yet. For me what it did, and what I’m glad the health care workers clarified with me, was figuring out what my personal ‘warning signs’ are for a situation like that occurring, before it occurs. So for instance for me it’s feeling spacey and empty and weird, and that will happen many hours or even days before things get severe. My psychologist thinks that I sort of dissociate under certain instances of crushing stress and then my ‘defenses’ are down to self-harming behaviour. To stay safe my strategy is – rest, leave a message on my psychologist’s voicemail so they can follow up, take some medicine, avoid being alone…and more rest. Previously I’d tried to ‘snap myself out of it’ with increased activity, but that made things worse. Hope that answered your question? 🙂 sorry it’s so longwinded. TLDR: the hospital taught me to recognize warning signs, and when in doubt a to rest.

Dissociation is a stress management mechanism of sorts, it is often when in that state that sh becomes more prevalent, often to pull yourself out of that fugue, or to feel something. Much more too. So, no, not long winded. I like the avoid being alone part. I hope that is always possible.